Apples & Oranges

Will there be a time in my life that I will stop comparing myself to others? I know in my head that it isn't fair for me to compare myself to the best in everyone else. I tend to only see the really wonderful perfect parts of others around me and then wish I was that best part of every single woman I meet. I am tired of this and don't know how to stop. I am hoping I outgrow it because I am worn out wanting to be something I know isn't even possible. My life is good and I am extremely blessed, I hope to start focusing more on this...

H is for Hair

WooHoo! I got a brand new son! It is like a little surprise every time I look at him. It is about time!

BEFORE




AFTER!



Brayden's long hair had grown on me some, but I have been waiting a long time for him to get it cut. I love it. I should have sent the camera with Taft to show how much hair was on the floor. TONS! Ahhhh, it looks so nice! Yippee!

A Little Bit Sweeter

Here are a few little things lately that make my life a little bit sweeter.

Celebrating my loving husbands Birthday

My 3 1/2 year old still napping :)

Beautiful, wonderful, fabulous early spring weather, ahhhhh.

Fresh fruit, yum!

A Big comfy bed. (And a nightstand with lots of books)

Tulips peeking out of the ground.

And many more....

Falling Behind

I have fallen behind so far on my blog that I don't even want to update. Pathetic. Why is it so hard to start something again after a long break? Do you try to catch up, or do you just start fresh again? I have a hard time not catching up, but then it seems so daunting I usually just give up. That is why my personal journal hasn't been written in for years. Hopefully I can just start fresh again. We shall see...

It Could Have Been Worse & other tidbits

See that pile of 127 wet towels in front of my dishwasher? (Okay I am exaggerating) That is what happens when water starts pouring out of your dishwasher and you can't get it to stop pouring out. Actually I was very lucky. I was standing at my laptop in my kitchen when I heard water and it didn't sound normal. I look over and to my surprise water is coming out of the dishwasher. That is when I started yelling, "Run, run, hurry, hurry, get some towels, run, ahhhhh!" Luckily Brayden and Kennedi were close and responded to my pleas. Crazy. Even though I was there to wipe up the water as it was running everywhere, I wasn't as fast as I could have been so some of the water leaked into the basement, but lucky for us our basement isn't finished! :) I really had the kids running all over the place to find any spare towel, it really is kind of funny now. It would have been so much worse if I hadn't been standing there! I feel like it was a blessing from above that I caught it. So I am now becoming a professional hand dish washer. Luckily I have had practice when I would visit my grandma's house and she didn't have a dishwasher (or a disposal, uggg! I would choose a disposal over a dishwasher if you wanted to know) and growing up we had to hand wash all the pots and pans that couldn't go in the dishwasher. So now we shall see if we can get it all figured out. To repair or not repair, that is the question.

On to other things.

I was happy to find my oldest reading scriptures in bed when I went to wake up the kids in the morning.

*When I went to go swimming yesterday my friend was there too. I was putting on my goggles and she asked if I had been lifting weights. She thought my biceps looked cut. Well I liked that! Even though I haven't lifted weights in a long time, I will take the compliment. *I just have to write this stuff down so I can remember the good things about life too. :) (If anybody is reading, you can ignore that last little part)

Okay, so I am training for a triathlon. That is why I am swimming. I don't really know how to swim but I am learning and I might even learn to like it. It wears me out like crazy. I can't get enough air in, so I am hoping that will change. This is really pushing me out of my comfort zone. I need to push myself and get over the feelings of not even trying because I might not be the best. I don't want my kids to be like that, so I better be a better example.

And that is that.

KenKen hit the big 9er.

Our princess had her birthday. Every year we get to celebrate double on New Year's Eve. Our sweetie was born at around 9:45pm, December 31, 1999. The last of the century. It was cool. :)


Taft picked out some jewelry for Kennedi and as you can see she loved it!


Kennedi picked our traditional fondue for dinner. And I might say that I loved, loved, loved the cheese fondue this year. Ooooh yummy, cheese on french bread.

We also had our traditional other family over, Todd, Kat and the 3 lovely little girlies. We have had much fun over this Holiday break with them.

Since we were also having chocolate fondue, Kennedi just picked out one slice of cake at the store so we could have something to put candles in!

Kennedi's birthday will never happen when school is in, so we waited until today when she went back to school to have our lunch date. Her choice was Panda Express. I like it too. I love my Kennedi and she is a sweetheart. I hope she stays that way. She wants to do what is right. I hope that stays that way too. She has a little bit of sass in her. I hope it doesn't grow. :) I really do love this girl of mine.



The 3 girls. Kennedi is a WONDERFUL big sister to Ellie. I hope they stay close forever. I know I love my sisters!

Happy Birthday!

Gifts

We started a "new to us" tradition last year. On Christmas Eve we write down what Gift to the Savior we are giving for the new year. We then place the paper on our tree. The kids have been really great with what they want to do to improve themselves and be more like the Savior. We decided to give a gift to the kids to keep in their room to remind them about their gift. They loved the pictures of the Savior. Brayden said it was his favorite gift, he just loved it. If we can only keep him thinking this way when he is a teenager. Carter said it made him calm down when he was mad and went and looked at the picture. I thought that was sweet. Ellie said that her gift to the Savior would be "to smile at people." We asked her why she was going to do that and she said "I like Jesus and I follow His ways." Seriously. How many 3 year olds say that? Her Nursery teachers must be awesome!

Each FHE night we are going to quickly talk about how we are doing on our gift. I like that. It will help me be reminded of what I need to work on.

I love traditions.

Freeze Again.

We have hit the phase again where we wish that time could stand still. The eleven year old who hasn't hit the teenage angst and can actually help watch the kids. The almost 9 year old who is still sweet and fun. The silly 7 year old who is content to work hard in his room with a big Lego set. And the 3 year old who can play with others and still be a cute little funny girl. Why do they have to grow up? The problem is they haven't ever asked my permission to do so.

Picture Tag

My friend Callie tagged me to post my 4th picture from my 4th folder. Little did she know she could have chosen from like 85 folders, uggg, I need to clean up my picture folders! Anyway, this picture is from our first Mt. Rushmore trip to Reptile Gardens. We thought he was pretty cool, grrrrr.

(Callie if your family hasn't gone to Mt. Rushmore since you moved to Colorado, you should add it to your list! It is so fun and very family friendly!)

Hey friends, you should post your 4th picture from your 4th folder! Let's see them!

YeeHaw! A month later...

So less than a month after my exciting $2.99 for gas we now have....
$1.97 a gallon! I NEVER EVER EVER thought I would see under 2 bucks again.

Let's hope it stays this way!

Looking Back- Week 1

Man, I am behind in my blogging. The kids just went back on track this week and so I think I will just highlight the past 3 weeks while they were off track. It might be boring to everyone else, but I want to do it for me.

The boys had their last flag football game of the season on October 18th. We had to divide up the 2 games between Taft and I since they were back to back at different places. I was sad that I missed Brayden's last game. He scored a touchdown! Yippee! Go Brayden. Carter had a little bit of a rough ending, cut still played great. He really grew this year in football. It is crazy to see what 1 year does for skill.

October had the most excellent fall weather that I can remember. So warm and nice crisp mornings and night. I loved, loved, loved it. The kids had fun playing ball in the backyard and I loved our trees in our backyard this fall.

Some of us got to go have fun bowling with friends. I haven't been bowling since I was pregnant with Ellie, and it was so fun! I actually broke 100, a small miracle! It was fun to see Ellie bowl and see her cute little feet in cute little shoes. She was really quite independent and caught on quickly. It was also sweet to watch Brayden help her out (when she let him). Life really has gotten easier the past few months with Ellie growing up. We finally get to enjoy some fun activities again with her!




Our biggest highlight of week one was that the Griffeths came to visit! We all loved having them here and I love seeing how much baby Ty has changed and grown, he is so dang cute and sweet and fun! I love how our kids just play, play, play together. I wish they lived next door. We got in some great shopping at an awesome Children's Place outlet sale, fun climbing at Daniel's Park, lots of chatting, eating and running around the house and back yard. We wish they could have stayed longer.

Windy at Daniel's Park

Beautiful private Golf Course at Daniel's Park (how rich do you have to be to own that! When I say private, I mean you only play there if you are friends with the owner)

Could he be any cuter???

The Big Boys

The Girls

The Little Boys

The awesome parents to the cute kids

The night the Griffeths left we went to our ward OctoRootbeerFest. :) We had a chili cook-off and pumpkin carving contest. The kids ran around and were noisy, got their faces painted and ate candy. Good times. I actually got 3rd place on the chili cook-off! But I don't know, my chili was a new recipe with weird stuff in it like cocoa and unsweetened chocolate. Before we left I caught Carter carving a pumpkin all by himself. I was surprised at what a great job he did! But I guess he doesn't like to clean out the pumpkin first.

We got to finish out the week by celebrating Logan's 7th birthday with her and the 2 families. We all got to go bowling and have our "official" family birthday food, pizza. One funny thing while we were bowling was that Ellie threw the ball so slow that it actually stopped in the middle of the lane. :) Ha!

We had a great 1st week off!

So I of course voted. But I voted by sending in my ballot over a week ago. It seemed like a great idea since 4 years ago the lines were obnoxiously long, but really, I feel like something is missing. I miss the patriotic feelings of walking in my booth and voting. I miss joining all the other voters on this specific election day. I may have to re-think this in another 4 years. Happy Voting!

We are Dorks

So we became the people I didn't think we would ever be. We showed up at church, and guess what? No one was there. Why you ask? Because we are dorks and forgot to change our clocks! Doh! Man! We could have slept in longer!

Fragile

*Warning! Don't look below at the pictures if you are squeamish!*

Last night was a little scary. Brayden was at Scouts and I got a call. His Scout Leader said that there had been an accident and that Brayden had been burned. Bad enough that he probably needed to go to the Hospital. That is scary to me. I do think I stayed calm if I say so myself. I went to the church to get him and I could tell he was in pain. Brayden was all pale and ouchy. There had been an accident with the lightweight camp stoves they were making and the "fuel" started on fire and made the rubbing alcohol in it spray out onto Brayden's pants and they started on fire. Wow. He ran around a little and they finally got him to the ground and onto the grass and the fire went out. It really burned his leg. 2nd degree burns and all. He was a trooper but we definately needed to get him some care. On the way to the doctor Brayden couldn't understand why it had to happen. He said, "We even prayed that we wouldn't get hurt!" I had to explain that Heavenly Father doesn't always take away accidents and that it could have been so much worse. I took him to Urgent Care and they soaked his leg in ice water and cleared away a bunch of the skin, put some cream on it and bandaged it up. Poor guy was in such pain and I felt so bad for him. We got him home and he actually slept pretty well and woke up without pain anymore. (Prayers help!) Like I said, It could have been SO MUCH WORSE. His arm hair, eyelashes, and hair were burnt off, but no burns on his skin. We are grateful that the burns weren't worse and he is feeling great today. It will take awhile for the skin to heal, but it WILL heal and he be good as new. (Maybe just a little scared of fires for awhile though!) I do feel like he was watched over and protected as much as he could. Just another reminder how fast things can change and how fragile life is.

Brave Brayden

Nasty burn!

Gross stuff coming out of the gauze.